In fact, he misread them by a bit over eight years.

After Benat's burial in the mayor's family plot (his headstone boldly carrying the name Hastoy, to the great chagrin of those haughty merchants), a decent respect for the dead required the mayor to let some time pass before he looked into the matter of Benat's will. It was not, in fact, until later that afternoon that he found himself sitting in the once-a-month office of the lawyer from Licq, discussing the subject.

"But of what money do you speak?" Maitre Etchecopar asked.

The mayor eyed him narrowly. There is no trusting these Licquois in matters of honor. "What money? Benat's fortune, of course."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Monsieur Aramburu."

"But the old idi-the Departed One-visited you to arrange his will. Don't you remember?"

"Ah, yes! I recall now. But that was years ago. He came to see me because he felt he was dying, and a friend had told him he must make a will."

"Exactly. I was that friend. And...?"

"And?" The maitre laughed. "Well, I had to explain to him that there is no point in making a will if one has no money."

"No money?"

"Not a sou."

"But... but all those years! He lived to be a hundred at least! And had a vigorous appetite to the very end, I can assure you! Surely he saved something."

"The little money he earned repairing stone walls around the countryside was spent in buying his bread and onions. He died with nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

That evening found the mayor in close conversation with our village priest.

"And you say he visited you only to make his confession?"

"Just so. He wanted to cleanse his soul because, he said, he could see his death coming. It appears he was a bit farsighted. Ha-ha."

"Some things are funny, Father. Others are not."

"Ah, to be sure, to be sure." The priest dried his eyes on the sleeve of his cassock. "The kindness of your family to our departed brother has been a lesson to all the village."

"Hm!"

"Without breaking the confidence of the confessional, I can tell you that he had fewer sins on his soul than a little girl at her first Holy Communion. I am sure that at this moment he is sitting joyfully in the blessed presence of God, if that makes your grief easier to bear."

"Oh, yes. Much, much easier. But... but what of his long walks to Paris and beyond!? If he was not attending to his riches, what was he doing?"

"I too was curious, so I asked him about that."

"And...?"

"He told me he took long walks because he liked to see things."

"Liked to see things? Seethings! What kind of a reason is that, I ask you?"

The priest lifted his shoulders. "An idiot's reason, I suppose. After all, dear Benat was... well, innocent."

"Innocent? Innocent! Like a fox he was innocent!"

Our mayor never completely lived down the little chuckles and casual comments made by his customers on the subjects of Christian charity and how some people's sly and subtle tactics sometimes misfired. And it was widely shared throughout the village that one of the great dangers of having a telephone was that electricity harms a man's brain and makes him so dense that even the village idiot can trick him out of eight years' bed and board. But although he winced beneath the jibes, even Mayor Aramburu felt a grudging pride that our village had produced this Fox-of-a-Benat who, idiot though he might be, was still slyer than the most intelligent of those dolts from Licq.

I passed the greater part of each day incognito. It used to make me laugh inside to realize that bypassers seeing me on my way home, dressed in worn-out sneakers with many-knotted laces, last year's school knickers patched at knee and butt, no socks to cover skinny, bruised shins, my cap skewed around to the side, mistook me for an ordinary kid, little suspecting that in fact I was a daring and resourceful leader of a team of hardened mercenaries.

It was our assignment to defend North Pearl Street from the Germans who, having gobbled up Czechoslovakia that March, now set their sights on Albany, which they planned to infiltrate by way of North Pearl. The U.S. high commander in chief of everything had called me into his lavish secret office to explain that if North Pearl fell, Albany was doomed, and if Albany was lost, what hope was there for America? So the fate of the country was in my hands and those of my band of loyal followers. Ranged against us were several thousand heartless, highly trained Nazi Strong Troopers.

Like many children, I lived an intense and secret play-life, and thought I was unique in this. So complex, so theatrical, so absorbing were my story games that I remember each summer between the ages of six and ten in terms of the game that dominated it. With Europe's slide into war a constant theme on radio news broadcasts, it was inevitable that the story game of the summer of 1939 would have to do with Nazis.

My scalded lungs rasping for air, I pressed back against the weathered siding of a boarded-up stable that dated from the era of horse-drawn wagons. Slowly... slowly... I eased my eye around the corner of the stable to locate the snipers concealed in the-they spotted me, and a bullet splintered the wood near my cheek! I drew back and hissed at my followers, "We'll make a dash for the shed. It's our only chance!" Uncle Jim exchanged a worried glance with Gabby Hayes, who raged, "Gosh-darn those dang-nabbed, lop-eared, low-down, pigeon-toed, no-account..." He sputtered off into mutters of indignation. I used to let my followers blow off steam now and then, knowing that when the chips were down they would obey my instructions because I knew best how to avoid being picked off by those dirty Nazi Strong Troopers with their itchy fingers curled around the triggers of high-powered automatic shooting devices. Gail looked at me, her eyes glowing with admiration, while Reggie nodded crisply in his stiff-upper-lip British way. I kept up a spitty covering fire with my Thompson submachine stick as my band dashed across the alley one by one and dove for the shelter of the shed. Both Reggie and Doc got hit on their way across, and Kato, my faithful Japanese valet, had to drag them the rest of the way. Then it was my turn. After emptying my last five-hundred-round magazine into the German trench-bunker-wall-fortification, I scrabbled across the alley on all fours, getting a slug in one shoulder and another in my leg and another in my other shoulder and scratching my knee on a broken bottle as I skidded into the shelter of the doorway and gathered my team around me. Gritting my teeth to conceal the pain, I drew a situation map on the ground with the map-making stick that also served as a pistol with an inexhaustible clip, a telescope that could read the enemy's plans at half a block, a radio that translated German into American, and a stick of dynamite that you lit with your snapped-up-thumb cigarette lighter and threw at the enemy, or rather, at the base of a huge rock outcropping that overhung the enemy's position and came crashing down on them, crushing them to a pulpy mass that your eyes flinched away from, but you told your followers that sometimes war wasn't a pretty sight, but you had to do what had to be done and that was that. Throwing your dynamite was a desperate last resort, considering the huge expenditure of war material the loss of this versatile stick constituted... or would have constituted, if you didn't always have the remarkable good luck to find another such stick lying close to the body of a fallen (or crushed) Strong Trooper. (All right, so I mis-heard 'Storm Troopers' on the radio. Is that a crime? Jeez!)

My band of intrepid followers included Uncle Jim from the week-day radio adventure Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy!,which also provided my admiring tomboy of a cousin, Gail, who mostly said, 'Wow!' or 'Whatever you say, Chief.' In addition, there was Gabby Hayes, toothless, bearded sidekick in innumerable grade-Z cowboy movies; then there were Jack, Doc, and Reggie from I Love a Mystery.Since Reggie was British, I had to use my 'English accent' so he could understand my instructions. Finally there was Kato, my faithful valet. This last character I borrowed from The Green Hornet,without being exactly sure what a valet was, but if Kato was Britt Reid's 'faithful Japanese valet', he'd do for me. (A couple of years later, right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kato became overnight a 'faithful Filipino valet', but by then I was no longer playing story games.) Each of my seven followers, Gail, Gabby, Jack, Doc, Reggie, Kato, and Uncle Jim, had a distinct personality and role that I remember clearly to this day: Gail was always astonished and admiring, Gabby was full of folksy wisdom and given to long strings of curses, Reggie always knew the polite thing to do, Jack and Doc were brave but headstrong and rash, Kato was faithful, and Uncle Jim was always worried that I was taking on tasks harder than any one man could hope to accomplish. This mixed bag of followers might fret and squabble and occasionally let their hot heads carry them too far, but when the chips were down they were all courageous and, what was more important, obedient. Oh, it's true they often got into trouble that called for quick reactions on my part, but I was fond of them, even if they sometimes tried my patience.